Germany: Not voting for women's rights...

He also gave him a few strong hand gestures when Trump out and out lied . He called him out verbally as well . It wasn’t as friendly as you might think .

You seriously think that’s a Nazi salute? I’ve said earlier that I wouldn’t vote for them based on their programme.

But I do think at some point my fellow countrymen and women will have to come to terms with the fact that it’s 2025, and almost every single European country has a party on the far right. We’re not special.

In terms of self-ID, if that’s all you care about, then the only coalition to guarantee repeal is black-light blue.

Erm, maybe look at how they are holding their arms out??

@Delphin

In my family, we often exchange books or magazines that we've read and pass them on to the next person. I've started to include copies of the Emma magazine. They help to explain the point without having to have awkward conversations with elder relatives in person. It's also less confrontational as it doesn't put people on the spot and they can read and think about the points in their own time. They don't have to talk about it with the giver, either.

Yes, that’s how I feel Delphin. When I've talked about this with friends they just look at me like I've gone mad, particularly when I get onto male rapists in female jails. The problem in Germany is that so much goes unreported, that I think people think nothing bad happens, that people are generally decent and there's nothing to worry about. Blissful ignorance I suppose.

@Shortshriftandlethal it was actually written into the CDU manifesto that they wish to repeal the self ID law. But whether that’s one of the negotiating points for making a coalition with SPD who supported the law remains to be seen. Either way, it doesn’t seem to be a big talking point in Germany, as it has been in the UK. I think Germans are still stuck at the ‘be kind’ stage and don’t recognise the implications for half the population. Either that or they just don’t care.

Listening to the White House press conference with Trump and Macron

@Shortshriftandlethal
They voted against this in parliament, all of the CDU, and there are murmurs that they might want to try to repeal it. How likely that is depends on the upcoming coalition.

What is Merz's position on the recent Gender Self Id Law? Are the CDU pushing back against this?

@ForestAtTheSea we had a few lines, mostly on needing independence, the interference and the US don't care about Europe

We also have coverage of Macron being friendly with Trump today, and a lot on Starmer doing the same later

Hard to gauge how much US will continue to be relied upon by UK

has anyone else seen calls to send cups to Merz? I can't get over him being such a whiny baby when Merkel won the leadership of the party and he gave up politics....
Happy the FDP are still getting smacked in the face in the polls. I would have liked BSW to get a better result tbh.

sorry late to the party. I would never vote for the AfD or the CDU. Not interested in the tiny fringe parties (and BSW didn't have candidates in my are)
I'm not voting Green. They have lost their way - and Ganserer gives me the absolute creeps, so meh.

Basically where i live it will be CDU with a huge margin. so my votes are wasted anyway. But i voted SDP with Die Linke. Hopefully it contributed to the slight increase in Die Linke votes.

The fact that they can't clean up is exactly why they haven't had the success of Le Pen or Meloni.

4.97% as of right now according to Tagesschau. Gonna be very close, I don't think that is final yet.

@EasternStandard

Regarding cooperation with the US, of course it was clear the new Trump administration has different goals and he complained about payments for NATO during the first term, too. He also threatened to withdraw the US troops but probably some advisers with a clearer mind had pointed out to him that there are a couple of advantages for the USA as well and that it was their idea in the first place.

This time around there are far fewer people who disagree and can keep him from doing the most lunatic things, and the talk about Greenland isn’t helping, either.
But suddenly hearing that an ally becomes the enemy overnight, especially for someone who is in a conservative party and was all about US cooperation (and employed as higher up by Blackrock, never forget that), was probably not part of his plan.

One of the problems of the past coalition was that they simultaneously passed many laws about energy saving / renewable energy which affected the costs of housing, products and food, and at the same time due to the war, energy costs in general multiplied.
At the same time, Germany did support the Ukraine, sent a lot of money and equipment and took in refugees, which seemed to be reasonable actions, but all together things are becoming quite expensive.

@EasternStandard

I’m not sure which statements by Merz you mean, as he said a lot of things.
But in general I would say that almost all parties (except for the AfD) were quite fed up with Musk’s interventions on top of general disinformation.

On the matter of free speech as pontificated by JD Vance it also needs to be looked at the format of discussion.

A couple of real people discussing in a civilized manner and disagreeing is one thing.
But social media and their algorithms and Russian/Chinese etc botfarms make for a very different quality of debate. Now there are real people discussing in good faith and lots of trolls and disinformation. Videos going viral in a couple of hours can spread misinformation much more quickly. We are not talking about fair and free debate.

That’s why the EU and other actors want media and internet companies take their responsibility seriously. It is not interference to ask companies to adhere to national and international laws. What Musk & Co. (& Farage) are asking from countries is the equivalent of asking the police to not interfere in crime because it hinders the freedom of criminals to do what they want.

Not the least the Springer media and yellow press and the former Bild-Zeitung editor in chief with the new portal Nius don’t care about fanning the flames, either.

I’m sure there are a lot of problems in Germany which need to be dealt with, but the quality of the debate changed a lot.
This started before Covid and lockdowns, but these events contributed significantly to a worldview that the government in general is evil and unreliable and is the enemy of the “free and reasonable” people.
Every law is seen as oppression instead of trying to govern a country with many differing interests.

Especially in Eastern Germany which doesn’t have the same history as the western part re: democracy (yes, so many decades after reunification) and many structural economic problems there is a much stronger mistrust of the state, because the former socialist GDR was not trusted, either.

These are of course often the children and grandchildren of people who grew up in the GDR, but everyone born before 1989 will remember it well and the new mistrust could connect easily to the previous mistrust and helps support for the AfD.
The general tone of the debate is much, much, much more aggressive and hateful. What many of their politicians are doing lowers the tone much more than using brown as their colour in statistics.

About “not leaving a percentage of the voters out of the debate”; I don’t think the description is so accurate.

In most election, a big percentage of the votes are not represented. US elections: 49% roughly, UK elections – a different system to the German one but not everyone is represented. Germany: you need enough for a coalition to have more than 50% of the representatives in parliament – the others are the opposition. The opposition has a lot of rights and can question the Government – a bit similar to PMQ in the UK.

Due to the federal system, parties that are in the opposition on a national level are often in parliaments on country level or district governments. Not everything is decided on a national level. When you look at past elections, there always were parties, having between 30-40% of the votes between them, which were not in Government.

@Shortshriftandlethal

Merz knew what he was doing … and? Like it or not, the only way to take voters away from the AfD is to take the issues they raise seriously. They’re no longer a mere protest party.

As for Alice Weidel being accomplished, I meant this in the sense of having educational credentials, including speaking Mandarin, and professional experience. She may still be a terrible politician. What do you think, is she in the same league as Le Pen or not?

Regarding identity, the above seems to be a poster of an AfD candidate with his family. The kids happen to be blond. Yes, some of us are uncomfortably reminded of Nazi propaganda about blond Aryans, I get this. But there are some subtle differences. The parents look kind of dorky in their IKEA kitchen, not like Nazi super-men. They seem to be on the same level in terms of power. Not quite sure what to make of it, tbh.

Merz knew very well what he was doing. That's why there was such an outcry and tons of demonstrations.

Do you really think...

At this point I don't really think anything. I'm asking questions to see where Germany are out of interest

We do have a PM meeting Trump with the intention of asking for security back stop in Ukraine and wanting to send troops

On that level we are diverging from Merz who has made strong statements in the other direction. I find this a disconnect here - are we in the U.K. together with US still or not and what does that mean wrt Germany and other allies

Idk what's the best way at this point tbf, I'm listening to various commentators

Security is hugely intertwined and I've not heard anyone say here how that will be dealt with

I agree with you on your stability of German gov representing more people than here currently, notwithstanding the second winner and those voters

The UK (and Canada, Australia, NZ) WERE incredibly tied to the US on security.

Do you really think that the intelligence sharing relationship will hold up if there's a risk that whatever intelligence we share with the US gets passed straight on to Trump's chum Vlad?

I think we as Europeans (including the UK) have to accept that the Transatlantic Alliance is over, that NATO can no longer rely on its most important member (who has threatened to annex one member and seize territory from another), and that we have no choice but to go it alone and build a new security alliance. This means building up the gaping hole in military capability (particularly around logistics and intelligence gathering) that will be left by the US taking a leave of absence for the next four years.

Germany always has coalitions and they are generally stable - in fact Germany typically has the longest lived governments of any country in Europe. The government will be formed of parties that garnered over 50% of the votes. Compare to the UK where governments routinely are formed by 'ignoring' well over 50% of the votes.

But how stable is that coalition going to be if the votes of a large proportion of the electorate are completely sidelined. Look what has been happening in France - where Macron can't seem to create anything long term and functional.